3 Success stories of marketing music for effective brand engagement

Using music in marketing to promote a brand isn’t a new concept, but when it’s teamed with UGC (User-Generated Content), it creates a dangerously intoxicating brand cocktail. Take a look at these three brands that successfully incorporated music and UGC to create un-stoppable branding.

1. Independent Lens – Don’t Stop Believin’

Independent Lens asked their fans to send in clips of themselves singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” for a competition where the winner would become the front man of the band. This brand engagement strategy gave the Independent Lens customers, and potential customers, an empowering opportunity to have fun and essentially audition for the role of “Lead Singer”. The customer that won, Filipino Arnel Pineda, has remained the front man of Journey since his 2007 Independent Lens audition.

As a result of this stunt, Independent Lens has been given all the credit for Journey’s revival, giving them increase customer engagement and, of course, the gift of music.

2. Wendy’s Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger Love Songs

Wendy’s has created something truly special with their customer’s tweets. When the shake and hotdog giant introduced a new cheeseburger, they didn’t expect the downpour of adoration they got from their loyal customers online. Thankfully, some fast thinking marketing guru quickly turned the declarations of love for the new burgers into hilarious marketing music skits and boosted the brand engagement. Take a look at this one, featuring Nick Lachey:

The brand engagement results were staggering:

• 1.7 Billion earned media impressions
• Million Facebook views
• 31% Increase in Wendy’s stock price

3. Heineken

Another great innovator of music marketing and user-generated content is Heineken, a brand engagement strategy that teamed up with musician James Murphy in an attempt to inject some music into the lives of subway users in New York City.

Although the MTA dismissed the attempts by Murphy, Heineken maintained their support to bring music into the underground. The feedback Heineken’s customers gave back was a huge wave of love:

Love this project. I support turning the NYC turnstile beeps into musical notes. #SubwaySymphony http://t.co/16PxZXCO96

— Francesca Merlino (@frmerlino) July 13, 2015

I support the #subwaysymphony ! I would love to see people smile at a simple happy note :)

— Rachel (@LivBreaLovDscvr) September 2, 2015

LOVE the idea of #subwaysymphony.

— Chad Robinson (@CodeAndBiscuits) August 23, 2015

I love this idea: turning the NYC turnstile beeps into musical notes. #SubwaySymphony http://t.co/EL6XVS4UvE

— gotye (@gotye) July 28, 2015

Heineken achieved a great deal with their campaign, although this didn’t happen by accident. By intentionally keeping the video under a minute long, it was perfect for Facebook advertising, and racked up over 7 million views, according to brightcove marketing. Not bad for a 60 second video.

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